I started a quest to find terrific blues music and incredible musicianship when I was just a little kid. I also have a tremendous appreciation of fine musical instruments and equipment. One of my greatest joys all of my life was sharing my finds with my friends. I'm now publishing my journey. I hope that you come along!

Please email me at Info@Bmansbluesreport.com

Thursday, May 14, 2015

BB King has passed. - My thoughts and prayers are with his family

LAS VEGAS (AP) — B.B. King, whose
scorching guitar licks and heartfelt vocals made him the idol of
generations of musicians and fans while earning him the nickname King of
the Blues, died late Thursday at home in Las Vegas. He as 89.
His attorney, Brent Bryson, told The Associated Press that King died peacefully in his sleep at 9:40 p.m. PDT.
Bryson said funeral arrangements were being made.
Although
he had continued to perform well into his 80s, the 15-time Grammy
winner suffered from diabetes and had been in declining health during
the past year. He collapsed during a concert in Chicago last October,
later blaming dehydration and exhaustion. He had been in hospice care at
his Las Vegas home.
For most of a career spanning nearly 70
years, Riley B. King was not only the undisputed king of the blues but a
mentor to scores of guitarists, who included Eric Clapton, Otis Rush,
Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall and Keith Richards. He recorded
more than 50 albums and toured the world well into his 80s, often
performing 250 or more concerts a year.
King played a Gibson
guitar he affectionately called Lucille with a style that included
beautifully crafted single-string runs punctuated by loud chords, subtle
vibratos and bent notes.
The result could bring chills to
an audience, no more so than when King used it to full effect on his
signature song, "The Thrill is Gone." He would make his guitar shout and
cry in anguish as he told the tale of forsaken love, then end with a
guttural shouting of the final lines: "Now that it's all over, all I can
do is wish you well."

Advertisement

His
style was unusual. King didn't like to sing and play at the same time,
so he developed a call-and-response between him and Lucille.
"Sometimes
I just think that there are more things to be said, to make the
audience understand what I'm trying to do more," King told The
Associated Press in 2006. "When I'm singing, I don't want you to just
hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the
songs have pretty good storytelling."
A preacher uncle
taught him to play, and he honed his technique in abject poverty in the
Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of the blues.
"I've always
tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn't have to be sung by a
person who comes from Mississippi, as I did," he said in the 1988 book
"Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music."
"People all over the world have problems," he said. "And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die."
Fellow
travelers who took King up on that theory included Clapton, the
British-born blues-rocker who collaborated with him on "Riding With the
King," a best-seller that won a Grammy in 2000 for best traditional
blues album.
Still, the Delta's influence was undeniable.
King began picking cotton on tenant farms around Indianola, Mississippi,
before he was a teenager, being paid as little as 35 cents for every
100 pounds, and was still working off sharecropping debts after he got
out of the Army during World War Two.
"He goes back far
enough to remember the sound of field hollers and the cornerstone blues
figures, like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson," ZZ Top guitarist Billy
Gibbons once told Rolling Stone magazine.
King got his
start in radio with a gospel quartet in Mississippi, but soon moved to
Memphis, Tennessee, where a job as a disc jockey at WDIA gave him access
to a wide range of recordings. He studied the great blues and jazz
guitarists, including Django Reinhardt and T-Bone Walker, and played
live music a few minutes each day as the "Beale Street Blues Boy," later
shortened to B.B.
Through his broadcasts and live
performances, he quickly built up a following in the black community,
and recorded his first R&B hit, "Three O'Clock Blues," in 1951.
He
began to break through to white audiences, particularly young rock
fans, in the 1960s with albums like "Live at the Regal," which would
later be declared a historic sound recording worthy of preservation by
the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry.
He
further expanded his audience with a 1968 appearance at the Newport Folk
Festival and when he opened shows for the Rolling Stones in 1969.
King
was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984, the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and received the Songwriters Hall of Fame
Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990. He received the Presidential Medal
of Freedom from President George W. Bush, gave a guitar to Pope John
Paul II and had President Barack Obama sing along to his "Sweet Home
Chicago."
Other Grammys included best male rhythm 'n' blues
performance in 1971 for "The Thrill Is Gone," best ethnic or traditional
recording in 1982 for "There Must Be a Better World Somewhere" and best
traditional blues recording or album several times. His final Grammy
came in 2009 for best blues album for "One Kind Favor."
Through it all, King modestly insisted he was simply maintaining a tradition.
"I'm just one who carried the baton because it was started long before me," he told the AP in 2008.
Born
Riley B. King on Sept. 16, 1925, on a tenant farm near Itta Bena,
Mississippi, King was raised by his grandmother after his parents
separated and his mother died. He worked as a sharecropper for five
years in Kilmichael, an even smaller town, until his father found him
and took him back to Indianola.
"I was a regular hand when I
was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking
that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to
help your family," he said.
When the weather was bad and he
couldn't work in the cotton fields, he walked 10 miles to a one-room
school before dropping out in the 10th grade.
After he broke
through as a musician, it appeared King might never stop performing.
When he wasn't recording, he toured the world relentlessly, playing 342
one-nighters in 1956. In 1989, he spent 300 days on the road. After he
turned 80, he vowed he would cut back, and he did, somewhat, to about
100 shows a year.
He had 15 biological and adopted children. Family members say 11 survive.
———
Associated Press writer John Rogers in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band!- ”LIKE”

Disclaimer

The music, videos and photographs seen and heard on this site are meant to enhance the enjoyment of the articles and the reader's overall experience. Our intention is to honor the artists that interest us by exposing their creativity to the masses. If you like the music you hear, I urge you to support the artists by attending their performances and/or purchasing their music. If you hold the copyright to any of the materials on this site and would like us to remove same -please contact us.

Submissions

You can always submit any cd's for review or update me on your current events. Please feel free to contact me at Bman's Blues Report 4350 E Camelback Road, Suite G250, Phoenix, AZ 85018 or by email at Info@bmansbluesreport.com